


drifting

by skuls



Series: X Files Rewatch Series [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s02e08 One Breath, F/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 23:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14580057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Scully deals with the aftermath of her return in One Breath.





	drifting

There was a white, blank space in her brain, so bright it was almost blinding.  She felt like she was drifting aimlessly, on her back, face towards the sky. She could hear birds chirping. She heard her father's voice echoing in her head. She felt tears welling in her eyes. 

There were lights above her, and then there was nothing. Duane Barry's arm around his neck, a scream building in the back of her throat, and then the lights, and then nothing. And then. And then a hospital. The chirping faded away into beeping. She was lying in bed, stiff and strangely sleepy, the way that you feel after sleeping heavily for a long time. “Call Dr. Daly,” said a nurse at the end of her bed, rushing to her side. 

Scully's throat was sore. She had a flurry of questions building in the back of her mind that she couldn't find the words for: her father, what happened to her, how she got here.  _ What did he do to me? _ she wanted to ask, pleading, but she found herself unable to speak. The white space was overwhelming; she didn't know what had happened to her and she wanted to know. The nurses scurried around her, drawing blood, asking questions until Scully's head spun. And suddenly her mother was at her side, tears welling in her eyes. “Oh, Dana,” she said thickly, taking her hand. 

“Mom,” said Dana, and she felt like she was going to cry, too. “Mom, what happened?”

“Oh, honey.” Her mother squeezed her hand, as if she was too overwhelmed to speak. She stroked her hair back like she was small again. 

Melissa appeared behind their mother, her eyes wide, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She looked happy, relieved. “Missy?” Scully mumbled, unable to believe it. She hadn't seen her sister in months, nearly a year, aside from phone calls and postcards from the West Coast. 

“Hi, Day.” Missy took her free hand and smiled wider at her. Scully let her eyes slide closed, overwhelmed. She wanted to ask about her dad, but she knew he wasn't here. Everything felt foggy and muddled, but she knew her father was dead. She understood that much about the white space. 

She felt dizzy. She lay her head flat on the pillow.

When things settled down, they moved Scully to a private room, her mother and her sister by her side. Melissa seemed to remember something as they settled her in, spine straightening like she'd been shocked into remembering something. “Dana, your partner,” she said. 

Scully blinked in surprise, the memories rushing in like a river: Duane breaking into her apartment as she was calling Mulder, screaming his name as they struggled, hoping he'd hear. “Mulder?” she said dumbly. Had he gotten to her in time? 

“Yes, I need to call him and tell him you're awake.”

Her mother nodded as she rubbed circles on the back of Scully's hand. “He was so worried about you,” she offered. “He'll be so happy to find out you're awake, Dana.” 

Scully swallowed thickly, her throat strangely sore. “Didn't he bring me here?” she asked. Confusion flickered over both of their faces in a way that made Scully's stomach twist painfully. “After the mountain?” she continued, almost pleading. “Duane Barry? D-did he find me up there?”

Missy and her mother exchanged a look Scully couldn't read. “I'll be right back,” Melissa said, turning to leave the room. Her mother's eyes shifted to her lap.

“Mom?” Scully asked, almost demanding. “What happened? Did someone find me on Skyland Mountain?”

Her mother swallowed, stroking her hair again. “Dana,” she said softly, and it was her Bad News voice, the one she'd used every time they'd had to move when she was a kid, when she told Dana that her Sunday School teacher had gotten murdered. “You weren't found on the mountain. We… we don't know where you've been.” She sounded moments away from tears again. “You showed up in the hospital a few days ago, and we didn't think you'd…” She broke off, wiping at her eyes.

The terror built in Scully's stomach, to the point where she thought she'd throw up. Duane kept ranting about someone coming for him, that they would take her instead of him, but she hadn't thought that had actually  _ happened _ . She'd thought that someone, that Mulder gotten to her first. “Mom?” she asked, the sheets clutched in her hands. Her hair was longer now, just past her shoulders; she couldn't believe she hadn't realized earlier. Had they taken her, what had they done to her? “How long was I gone?” 

Her mother blinked hard, still not looking at her. “Three months,” she said softly. 

Nausea rose up in Scully's throat. Three months? “I was gone for that long?” she asked softly. “And no one… no one knows what happened to me?”

“I'm so sorry, honey,” her mother said softly. “But you're okay. We really didn't think you'd recover but you did. It's a miracle.” She smiled at Scully, squeezing her hand. 

Scully tried to smile back, clumsily, but it didn't feel real. The white space was too much of her time now. It was November, not August, and she'd lost three months, assumedly to the same things or people or whatever that had taken Mulder's sister. Three months gone. She couldn't believe it. She wanted it back.

Melissa returned, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Fox sounded so relieved,” she said, in a tone that was either supposed to be reassuring or teasing. She grinned in a relieved way of her own.

“Not Fox,” Scully said absently. Her knuckles were white from where she clutched the blankets. 

“Oh, right. Mulder.” Missy sat on the side of the bed, sounding like she'd been corrected a lot lately. “You know, he really cares a lot about you, Danes. The entire time you were in the hospital, he was running around trying to get revenge for you.”

Scully's cheeks pinked a little bit as she fisted the blanket hard. She remembered Mulder's fury earlier in the year when Barnett had tried to kill her, when Willis had abducted her. She'd vaguely thought that he would search for her with the same fervor, but she'd never considered it. Her mind was calmer than the franticness of the trunk, of Skyland Mountain, but she still felt freshly scared, and she couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that this was three months later, that Mulder had supposedly been searching for three months. He was the type to search for that long, he'd looked for his sister for over twenty years, but somehow she had never imagined that he would look that long for her.

She nodded vaguely, her eyes on the blanket over her lap. 

They were quiet then, her mother and her sister, seemingly sensing that she wasn't in the mood to talk. Her mother held her hand and her sister sat beside her and Scully watched the pattern of the knit blanket in her lap. Swallowed back tears at the back of her throat.

\---

She could only remember vague images from the white space—images from when she was in the coma, she assumed. Her father speaking to her. A nurse whispering to her comfortingly. Her mother and her sister on the dock at the end of a lake. Mulder's voice, softer than she'd ever heard it, somewhere above her. A forest, a dark space. A baby crying. She didn't have any idea how much of it was real. She wanted to cry herself. She had some strange empathy for Samantha Mulder, even though she had never met Mulder's sister and possibly never would. The horror of being taken, whether it was by aliens (which it likely wasn't) or shadowy government men, all this lost time. She wondered what Samantha could remember. If she could remember anything.

She was happy her mother and sister were there, but she missed her father so much it hurt. Worse than last Easter or her birthday, raw as the first few months after they'd lost him. It felt wrong that he wasn't here. When she'd broken her wrist at twelve, her mother and father had been right there. It was still sort of stunning that Bill wasn't even there, even if she knew in the back of her mind that he was at sea and couldn't easily leave. She didn't expect Charlie to be there, but the fact that he wasn't hurt nearly as much. Her little brother; she and Melissa were more or less the only members of the family who still talked to him, and that was rare. He hadn't come to their dad's funeral so it made sense that he wouldn't come to this, but it still hurt a little. She tried not to dwell on it: the lost memories, the missing parts of her family. She tried to smile at her mother and her sister. She tried to tether herself to the real world. 

Some parts of the white space felt real. Melissa's hands hovering over her in that hokey hippie way she did things. Her mother crying softly over her, kissing her forehead gently. Mulder's hand wrapped around her own stiff fingers.

\---

She heard the door open, and Melissa got off of the bed. “Hello, Fox,” said her mother, and Scully realized that it wasn't a nurse. 

She smiled a little, her eyes half closed. She couldn't help it, even if she was confused and tired and frightened. The absurdity of people calling him Fox. “Not Fox. Mulder,” she said, and turned her head to look at him. 

He was smiling at her, in a soft, small kind of way, but the joy behind it was overwhelming. “How you feeling?”

Scully suddenly felt the overwhelming, unexplainable need to apologize. All she'd been through and she had no answers, no way to hunt down the people who did this to her. No memories of Mulder's sister, if she was there. “Mulder, I don't remember anything,” she said. “After Duane Barry…”

He was shaking his head. “Doesn't… doesn't matter.”

She nodded a little, letting her eyes slip shut briefly. 

“I brought you a present,” Mulder added, rummaging in the blue plastic bag he held. He held out a tape with a flashy cover. “ _ Superstars of the Superbowls. _ ”

“I knew there was a reason to live,” she said with a quiet dryness, taking the tape from him. 

“Yeah,” he said softly. He reached out and took her hand, gingerly, looked down at their joined fingers. “I know you want to get some rest, I… just came by to see… how you were doing, say hi.” He reached up and squeezed her hand in both of his before turning to leave. 

An urge she couldn't quite place rushed into her mind, something she wanted to tell him. “Mulder?” she said, and he turned back. “I had the strength of your beliefs.” And she had, somehow, she had. 

He nodded a little, tentatively, said nothing but rummaged in his pockets until he came up with what looked like a gold chain. And Scully remembered then; she'd lost her cross, it had gotten snagged on the carpet in the trunk of the car and the clasp had broken. She'd figured it was gone, she hadn't thought that… 

Mulder extended the hand with the chain and she reached out to take it. “I was holding this for you,” he said, as the cross draped over her fingers and landed on her palm. 

Scully looked towards her mother, who seemed to confirm it silently. She looked back at Mulder, who's eyes seemed to be saying everything he couldn't. He gave her another meaningful look before he left. 

Scully closed her fingers over the cross. It wasn't cold, she realized, like it usually was after she didn't wear for a while; it was like she could still feel him there. “Mom, could you…” she asked, lifting her closed hand.

“Of course.” Her mother moved towards her, and Scully lifted her head and let her mother clasp it around her neck. The clasp wasn't broken anymore. “I told Fox the story of when I gave this to you,” she said, moving her hair aside at the back. “I wanted him to keep it… It's silly, Dana, but I wanted him to keep it because I thought that if he had something of yours, he'd be able to find you. He promised me that he would.”

He hadn't, but the sentiment rose in Scully's throat like tears, the sweetest of the silly gift and Mulder keeping her cross. She wiped her eyes, reached down and touched her cross in the hollow of her collarbone. 

“He wore it, you know,” Missy offered, coming back to sit on the bed. “I saw him wearing it one night.”

Scully couldn't explain the emotions she was feeling, but she knew that at least part of it was some extraordinary affection towards Mulder. He'd looked for her and he'd worn her cross and she couldn't quite believe it. She stroked the cross with her thumb before letting her hand fall.  _ We just work together,  _ she'd told her mother several times, but they didn't anymore. They weren't just friends, either; their relationship seemed to transcend that. Like their partnership had gone beyond the FBI. 

“I can't believe he kept it,” she said quietly. “All this time.”

Melissa gave her a knowing look that suggested she could believe it. Big siblings never stopped teasing, she supposed, or maybe Missy was trying to preserve normality. Either way, Scully ignored it, letting her eyes fall shut. She nestled back into the sheets and put her thumb back against the necklace. 

\---

Her dreams were muddled. Scully couldn't have told anyone what they were about or what they meant, but she woke up shaking, covered in sweat. 

Nurse Owens, the woman who had spoken to her while she was asleep, apparently didn't exist. Mulder would think she was a ghost or some other sort of spirit. Scully didn't know what to think. She told herself it must've been some sort of hallucination, a grasp for comfort. 

She had to stay in the hospital for a week, another week or two of recovery at home. She wanted to go home, she wanted to go to work. Her mother said that was perfect, that she and Melissa could spend the next week getting her apartment ready. Scully looked at her in horror, in realization of something: they hadn't expected her to make it.

\---

“Your boyfriend,” said a nurse that Scully had grown to like during her conscious time in the hospital as she took Scully's blood for testing. She shook her head in something like disapproval. “He caused quite a ruckus. He must really care about you.”

“I don't have a boyfriend,” Scully said. 

The nurse raised an eyebrow at her. “Tall guy, dark hair? He came in here knocking people over and threatening them when you showed up here. He sat with you all night just before you woke up.”

“Mulder?” Scully asked. “He's not my boyfriend, he's my par—” She swallowed back the word before she could finish it, and amended, “He's my friend.”

“You've got a good friend,” the nurse said. “He certainly cares a lot.”

Scully swallowed.  _ That he does,  _ she thought, and touched her cross again. The shape of it was beginning to feel familiar under her hand.

\---

He’d pushed her away after the Files were closed. 

She hadn't expected it because they'd had some strange pact that they wouldn't stop working together. They'd keep looking for his sister, for the people who were harming civilians, for justice. But at some point, perhaps out of fear, Mulder had insisted that they cut off contact. That they look alone, if at all, and that they communicate subtly. They came up with a system, picture frames and complicated codes. She'd hated it. She'd missed him, those summer months between the Files closing and Duane Barry, even with all the times they'd broken the rules and worked together anyway. Now she wondered if he was trying to prevent something like what happened from happening, to protect her by distancing himself.

Maybe that thought—that she'd been abducted because they kept working together—should scare her, but strangely enough, it didn't. It only made her more determined. 

Mulder came to the hospital for lunch one day. He had another present, a dog-eared paperback on Bigfoot. She rolled her eyes as she took it—she planned to read it because she was bored out of her mind, but she would never, ever admit it to him.

Melissa and her mother weren't there, for once—they'd spent most of the week there, but they were assumedly working on her apartment now. Mulder seemed almost relaxed without them there; if Scully knew anything about her family, they'd probably driven him absolutely crazy. He sat on the edge of the bed gingerly, crumpling that same blue bag between his fingers. Scully flipped through the book before setting it to the side. “Mulder, you should eat my Jell-O,” she said, motioning to the food tray with disgust. It didn't taste anything like the cherry Jell-O she'd loved as a kid, and she was certainly sick of it after four days in the hospital. “I don't want it, and the nurses get mad when I don't clean my plate.”

Mulder looked stricken for a minute. “You should eat it, Scully,” he said in a soft voice she hadn't heard since she woke up in the hospital after the evil bugs. “You probably need it.”

“I'm fine, Mulder, and I'm sick of that shit.” She shoved the bright green Jell-O at him. “Go on.”

He took a half-hearted bite before setting it down. “How are you feeling?” he asked. His hand was flat on the mattress, directly next to where her knee was under the blanket. 

Scully swallowed irritably. She was really fucking tired of that question. “I'm fine, Mulder,” she said. 

“That's good.” Mulder offered her a small smile. “I'm glad to hear it.” 

She nodded a little, tucking hair behind her ear. Her cross shifted against her skin. 

He fidgeted a little on the edge of the bed. “So I have some good news,” he offered. 

Scully smed in a half-bitter, half-genuine type fashion. “Yeah? What's that?” 

He nudged her arm in a companionable way that made it easy to pretend she wasn't in a hospital bed. “Skinner put us back on the X-Files,” he said. “When you're feeling better, when you've recovered… we can start working together again.”

Scully blinked in astonishment. “They're reopened?” she said. “How the hell did that happen?”

“I think Skinner did it to… try and hurt the people who did this,” he said, and she knew he meant,  _ Who took you.  _ “He said that was what they fear the most.”

She hoped they did. She hoped that they would find them, these people who took her and stole her memories, and they would bring them to justice. “That's wonderful, Mulder,” she said out loud. “I've missed work.”  _ Working with you,  _ she added silently.

“I have, too,” Mulder said, looking at the ground, and she knew what he meant because she knew he had been working this entire time. He'd missed working with her. He rubbed at his jaw absently. “You don't know how much.”

Scully blinked hard and looked at her lap. She wanted to tell him something, but she didn't know what to say.  _ My mom and sister and nurse all say that you tore apart a hospital for me? That you sat up all night with me? That you wore my cross? Is it true? Why did you do it? I would've done it for you, too, you know, if it'd been you. I would have looked for you, I wouldn't have forgotten you.  _ She tucked her hair behind her ears again. 

There were a lot of things she wanted to thank him for, but she couldn't find the words. Her hand was flat on the mattress and she could feel his fingers brushing over the back of hers before his palm covered it completely. It was warm, callused. That hand had held her cross. 

“I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner,” Mulder said suddenly, his voice coming out in a painful rush. When Scully looked back over at him, he was rubbing at his eyes frantically, like he was crying or trying to erase something. He sounded disgusted with himself. 

Scully's throat was sore; she swallowed painfully. “Mulder…” she started.

“I was so close, Scully. I was looking in his car… for you… and I saw a light…” He rubbed his eyes again, his forehead. “I'm sorry,” he said again, voice thick. “This never should have happened. If I'd been a little faster…”

“That wasn't your fault, Mulder,” Scully said unsteadily. His hand was still warm over hers. She suddenly couldn't stop picturing what would have happened if he had gotten there. Three months back, and Mulder's arms around her as he helped her up.

“It never should have happened,” said Mulder roughly. 

Scully blinked hard. “You're right,” she said, a little sternly. “It shouldn't have. But it's not your fault. It's nobody's fault but the people who took me.” She swallowed shakily, searching for her strength. “And we're going to find them,” she added. “We will.”

He still wasn't looking at her, but his fingers slipped under her palm and squeezed. It felt stunningly familiar. She thought that the nurse must have been telling the truth about Mulder sitting up with her all night. She squeezed back. They sat for a moment, hand in hand, in silence. 

Finally Mulder said, “Are you sure you don't want to eat the Jell-O? Not even a little bit?”

“I absolutely do not,” she said, just as sternly. 

One side of Mulder's mouth upturned, sluggishly, like it was involuntary. He squeezed her hand again. They sat together on the bed.

\---

She went to her mother's for a couple of nights after leaving the hospital. Being back at home was almost overwhelming, surrounded by pictures of her family. Bill called her from his ship, emotional and apologetic, but they didn't hear from Charlie. Missy stuck around, even though Scully suspected that their mom was driving her crazy. “I was thinking of moving down here, actually,” she disclosed to Scully on the couch. “Buying a house somewhere, maybe.”

“Really?” Scully raised an eyebrow. “You're finished with your traveling period?”

“You make it seem so flighty, Day,” Missy said. “I'd like to be close to you and Mom.” She nudged her like they were kids again. “I've missed you, little sister.”

Scully sighed, hugging her sister from the side. “I've missed you, too. Mom will love having you so close, with me gone half the time for work.”

“Oh, yeah, work.” Melissa made a teasing face at her. “And your partner.” The tone of her voice said everything she wanted to say about that topic. She hadn't let up on it for the past week and a half.

Scully took a gulp of the orange juice that her mom wanted her to drink. “Don't be ridiculous, Missy,” she said. “We're partners.”

“He cares a lot about you,” said Melissa, and there was no teasing in her voice. “I came in on that last night, you know… he was asleep in the chair beside your bed, and he was holding your hand.”

Scully looked at her hand like it was a foreign appendage. “He's a good friend,” she said. “He's saved my life more than once. And I've saved his.” 

Would she conduct a nightly vigil if it were Mulder? She practically had when he was shot, spending hours by his hospital bed or visiting his apartment, and she still remembered the cold terror that washed over her when she saw him fall. She would, of course she would; it was a silly question in the first place. She and Mulder more or less had each other's lives in their hands, and it would continue to be that way when they started working together. She hoped she wouldn't be faced with the possibility, but she sensed she'd have a hard time leaving Mulder if he got hurt. That she, too, would look for three months or longer if it was him. 

Melissa was resting her chin in her hands. “Have you ever thought about making him more than a friend?” she asked innocently, even though Scully knew she was anything but. Finally, the question she'd been dancing around since Scully woke up.

“Missy, shut up,” she retorted, like everything was normal and she hadn't almost died. And that was that. 

\---

They had dinner before Missy drove her home, her mom cooking for them the way she used to. Scully couldn't remember the last time that had happened; she usually insisted on cooking whenever she ate with her parents, a leftover instinct from trying to impress them, show them she was fine on her own. And whenever she ate at her parents’ (her mom's) house, she usually insisted on helping. She sat on the couch awkwardly, feeling as if she should be doing  _ something _ . She hated inactivity, had since she was a child. 

There was something comforting and awkward about sitting with only her mother and Melissa at the table, the absence of her father too large. Melissa and Bill made sporadic appearances, and Charlie almost never came, but her father was almost always there. The three of them studiously avoided the elephants in the room, her illness and her father, but Scully knew that they felt the loss, too. She almost told them that she had heard him in the white place, but she didn't know how to explain it, didn't know if she even believed it. She was content to leave the encounter for herself. 

Melissa drove her home after a tearful goodbye with her mother at the door and promises to call. Her apartment felt empty, even if all of her furniture had been put back in place, all of her things back where they went. (It looked almost perfect, but the couch was out of place and the books on the coffee table was stacked wrong. Scully swallowed back the grudge.) Melissa had a guilty look on her face, like she was apologizing for the fact that they'd prepared for her death. “I can stay here with you, Danes,” she said, touching Scully's arm gently. 

Scully shook her head firmly. “It's time,” she said. “I need to be able to be alone.” 

And she thought that it was time. She didn't want to lean on her family forever. But that first night alone was the worst. She tried to step back into her normal routine, her routine before she was abducted, but she found it unfamiliar. The corners of her apartment were too dark, she kept seeing shadows, things that made her heart race. Once she thought she saw Barry's face in the window and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming, quivering as she collapsed into her chair. She ended up turning on all the lights in her apartment, and she lost sleep for it, but she couldn't shake the tenseness that arose when she turned them off. She called Mulder, hoping his voice could fill the empty spaces in her head, but it went to voicemail and her hand went tense around the phone, briefly taken back to that night. What if he had been there? What would have happened differently? She ended up hanging up without leaving a message. 

It got better slowly. The nightmares fell away. She remained tense, but it lessened over time. 

She ended up actually talking to Mulder on the phone several times, usually at night. At first she called to ask if he'd discuss a case with her because she was bored out of her mind and he tried to gently divert her and she firmly stayed on topic. He finally gave in and told her about potential cases on the horizon. She kept calling and he kept answering and they talked about monsters and ghosts and other supernatural possibilities, but not aliens. 

The topics varied, occasionally. It was always surprising, but she found it comforting, the two of them talking like they were just friends, normal best friends. She loved talking to Mulder, had in an unabashed sort of way since they'd met.

One night, Mulder got distracted talking about the stars, and the abnormal subject surprised her more than she should've expected. “What?” she asked when he said it, genuinely confused.

“The stars,” he said again, assuredly. “I used to look up at them, on Skyland Mountain… I couldn't find you on the mountain, and I thought… I thought that maybe you might be up there.” He sounded terribly sad, regretful. It made her want to wrap herself around him. First his sister, and then her.

“Maybe I was and maybe I wasn't,” she said instead, trying to keep her voice steady. “But I'm here now. I'm back.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice surprisingly warm. “Yeah, you are.” 

Scully twisted the phone cord around her finger, tipping her head towards the window. The sky was navy and peppered with stars. She wondered if she really had been up there. She wondered if she really wanted to know. 

Mulder kept talking about something else, not the stars, his voice a comforting rumble in the background. She smiled, letting the phone cord unravel. She let him talk for a long time.

\---

She changed her living will two weeks after she woke up. It was her second day back at work—desk duty only for at least another week, until she was cleared to go back into the field. She asked Mulder to sign it again because she didn't want to approach the subject with her mother or Melissa—she didn't even want to remotely touch it. Some things were still too sore. But she sensed Mulder would sign without question.

The look of relief on his face when she asked him almost bowled her over. He looked like he could hug her. “Of course,” he said, taking a pen from the cup she kept on the desk. (He'd had a lot of trouble finding pens in the first few months of their partnership, to the point where she gave in and started collecting them in a plastic cup she bought at the dollar store.) He signed it so quick she thought he'd rip the paper. 

Scully sat on the edge of the desk, taking the paper and folding it. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I thought it best, under the circumstances.” When she'd made her living will, she hadn't been considering what would happen if she was ever actually  _ in  _ a coma. What her family would have to face, the possibility of letting her go. The fact that they'd go along with it. She swallowed. 

Mulder nodded. He scuffed his finger over the corner of the desk. “I never thought…” he started, uncertain. “I never thought that I'd be… so closely involved with something like that.” His head was ducked, in fear maybe. 

Scully slipped the paper into her purse awkwardly. “I never thought you would, either,” she said quietly. 

Mulder brushed his hand over her wrist, briefly, as he put the pen away. “I'm just glad you're okay.” He still wasn't looking at her, his hand clattering against the cup as he put the pen away. “That's all that matters.”

Scully chewed at her lower lip. She'd been looking for the words for weeks, some way to thank him, and in the moment, it just came spilling out. “Thank you for looking for me,” she said quietly, subdued, but she meant every word. 

He looked up at her with deep sincerity in his eyes, dark and soft. “I would have looked forever,” he said. 

Scully touched him on the shoulder gently. She said softly, “I know.” 


End file.
